Some time ago, I used to send out a newsletter to clients. Recently, some friends of mine thought it would be a good idea if I did so again. Since reycling is all the rage these days, I agreed. This is it.
The name? An accountant of mine once asked how I communicated with clients - Newsletters? No. Monthly statements? No. Follow-up phone calls? No. We came to the conclusion that I must do it by telepathy, and the name stuck.
Building a better Tomato Plant
I've been growing herbs and vegetable in a greenhouse using the Autopot hydroponic system for a few years. Recently, they asked me to come up with a graphic or animation that could be used to show how the system works, as their sales people spend a lot of time explaining it to customers.
Initially, I was thinking of drawing it, but decided to do it as a 3D render instead, as this gave me the option of both animating the movement, but also rendering at high resolution for possible print usage.
Although CGI animations can be incredibly time-consuming because you have to build all the models before you can even start animating, in this case the level of modelling was fairly simple, except for the tomato plants, which nearly drove me mad...
The final result of the animation can be seen on Youtube.
Messing about in boats
Some days I go into the office to do exciting things like invoicing, other days I have to drag myself out of bed to go sailing around the bay in a 57-foot luxury yacht.
Well, not actually sailing IN... more like dagging behind in a chase boat trying to get some decent shots.
Pure Papillon is a rather beautiful sailing yacht which has just been moved down from the Whitsundays to Melbourne's Docklands and is now available for charter. My job was to get some decent shots of it in its new home and then turn them into a website.
Luckily, when you get weather like this and a great location, it's pretty hard to take a bad shot. Of course, to make sure it wasn't all plain sailing (sorry) the chase boat suffered double engine failure and stranded us under the Bolte bridge...
Tom illustrates a book
Had the chance recently to work with my son Thomas on a new book from Ford Street Publishing.
Archie Cunningham is a shy boy who has three things – incredibly mean and greedy parents, no friends, and an amazing power. When an uploaded video shows the world what Archie can do, he suddenly becomes the main ingredient in a recipe for world domination. And then the fun really begins!
The Vanilla Slice Kid is written by Adam Wallace and Jack Wodhams, both of whom I've done covers for previously. The manuscript called for many varieties of mayhem, including exploding cakes and barfing dogs, so it seemed to be right up Tom's alley. My contribution was the production design and artwork layout.
Latest Paintings
Wind Me Up Watercolour on Arches Paper 465 x 660mm
An old tin toy that I'd had kicking around for a while as reference for a series of (unfinished) picture book illustrations.
Rosemary's Hare Acrylic on Schollers-Hammer Paper 300 x 500mm
Rosemary has started collected hare (not rabits) themed stuff, so being too cheap to buy a christmas present, I painted one.
If you'd prefer not to receive these newsletters (trust me, you're unlikely to be exactly bombarded with them) just send me an This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I will make sure they never interrupt the flow of financial offers from Nigeria and cheap Ugg boots again.
